Friday night, Nov. 2, 2007, the Ada Cougars, a football team that for 25 years has made a playoff appearance, lost to their traditional rival, the McAlester Buffaloes, in a contest that featured the most points scored in any game at ECU’s Norris Field, 101 (final score 59-42). The loss meant that for the first…

The state’s police training facility, located here in Ada, CLEET, called recently and told me that all their students were being let out of class today to drive north to Seminole in a convoy of nearly 100 vehicles, to attend the funeral of two Seminole County deputies who were killed in the line of duty…

I was scanning my Yahoo! News a few minutes ago and read an article about weight loss. Maybe I should say yet another article about weight loss. In it, I read this paragraph: And yet obesity figures have risen dramatically in the same period: a third of Americans are obese, and another third count as…

I know two people right now who are seriously ill with cancer. I can only imagine their pain and fear. All I can say to them is that every breath is precious, and that we are all, one day, of the earth. I smile and hold them in my thoughts. Every moment. Every breath. This…

The entirety of mainstream politics and media in America continues to refer to certain terrorists throughout the world as “Radical Islamists” or “Islamic Fundamentalists,” as if to intellectually divorce Islam from the terror perpetrated in its name. It is not the responsibility of the United States and its military or intelligence community to apprehend fundamental…

It must be very reassuing to believe in a life after death. I don’t believe in life after death because I don’t believe in death. Death itself is a transformation. Now I am a human. Tomorrow I may be dust. But all that I am remains. Maybe I am the sand in the desert. Maybe…

Recently an internet acquaintance got agitated with me on a forum thread about Mormon sex. The thread dealt with some of the myths regarding Mormon customs and practices. The person who started the thread ended his entry with, “P.S. Do you take your special underoos off when you get freaky? Or is their a special…

Sometimes I listen to Christian pop music. I like it because in some important ways, its sound stays out of the mainstream dreck. The lyrics, on the other hand, can get pretty lame. The biggest problem I have with them is that they are so obviously manipulative. They play to the simplest fears and most…

1. “Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if…

Unhappy people look down on me every day.

“Going to church doesn’t make you any more a Christian than going to the garage makes you a car.” –Laurence Peter

A very good friend of mine at my office was fired yesterday, and in his swirling miasma of rage and hurt, he lashed out at me, in the form of a nasty voicemail on my cell phone. In the middle of listening to it, he dropped the F bomb, and I deleted it at that…

Years ago one of our friends had tennis elbow, which in medical terms is called lateral epicondylitis. His doctor gave him an injection of cortisone, a long-acting glucocorticoid. Afterwards, he urgently and repeatedly told me, “Richard, don’t ever let them to that to you.” He said it was very painful and didn’t do any good….

I’ve seen my share of dead bodies in my 26 years shooting news, and today was another one of those occasions. This accident happened today a few miles south of Ada, not far from where Abby works. A teenage driver, going too fast, passed a large truck, colliding head-on with a full-size pickup. The driver…

My wife drove through KFC the other day on her way home from work. She just wanted a piece of chicken, a little bowl of mashed potatoes, and a small drink, which she ordered. When she got to the window, the clerk handed her a bucket of chicken, a tub of mashed potatoes, and a…